Where Old Ghosts Meet - Kate Evans [73]
“You were friends?” Her surprise was a shade too obvious.
“Well now, missus, far as I’m concerned, he was my friend. I’d ’ave done anything for that man.” He tapped the white shaft of his cigarette, rolled it about in his fingers and tapped again. He inhaled. The red tip glowed hot. “Isn’t that what a friend is?” He looked across at her through the curtain of smoke.
She nodded, then nodded again.
“When he come back that last time, he was in hard shape. I mean to say, not right in the top story, ye know.” He touched the side of his head with his cigarette hand and waited a moment before taking a deep draw. “I seen him one day, walkin’ out across the headland toward the Big Gulch. It was the spring of the year, freezin’ rain comin’ down and the ground hard and slick. He had nothin’ on his back but that suit of clothes he always wore. It come to me that was a strange thing to be doin’ on a day like that.”
He kicked at a stray pebble and it landed on the gravel below. “I made out across the path after him, keepin’ an eye on the black flaps of his jacket as they batted about in the wind. He was goin’ at some rate and when I caught up with him right by the gulch, I calls out. ‘Mornin’, Mr. Molloy sir, tis good to see you come back. It’s Joe Coady,’ I says, but he just kept lookin’ in the distance like he’d not heard a word I said. Enough to scare the livin’ shit outa ya, it was. So I just kept talkin’. ‘I’ve got work down to The Base in Argentia now, with the Yanks,’ I says, ‘steady work. I’m back to see me mother. I’ve done good, and I’m gettin’ married the fall. Tis all thanks to you, Mr. Molloy… me bein’ able to read and all. You done some fine job, you did, more power to ye.’”
He stopped to take another drag on his cigarette. “Jesus, girl, I didn’t know what to be sayin’. All I knowed was that I’d best keep talkin’. So I took a step closer and coughed a bit, the way he’d know I was still there. After a spell he says, ‘Thank you, Joe.’ Just the same, he never budged, just kept on starin’ ahead. So I starts up again. ‘The seals is whelpin’ down to Rook Cove. Maybe we could take a walk over.’ He said nothin’ for the longest while but by and by didn’t he turn away from the edge. ‘I’ll be going on home now,’ says he. It was all I could do, missus, not to reach out and catch hold to him for fear he’d slip and be gone over the side. He started to walk away and then he turns back and says, ‘I’m sorry, Joe, very sorry.’ He made like he wanted to say more but gave up and then took off back across the barrens, the wind tearin’ into him.”
A long white ash had formed on the tip of his cigarette. It hung there precariously and then fell to the ground, making a little white mound between his feet. He stared at it for a moment and then scattered it with the toe of his shoe and, taking a last draw, flicked the cigarette butt onto the parking lot. It made a little arc of smoke and sparks and landed a few feet away in the gravel, still glowing. He picked up his drink. The muffled sounds of the music came from behind. The dancing was still in full swing.
“Next time I come on him was months later. Aunt Peg was after takin’ care of him and he was shapin’ up finest kind. Always spoke to me on the road after that, asked after me mother and the like, but we never said nothin’ about that day ever again and I never told no one ’til now.” He finished his Pepsi and set the bottle down by his feet. “He liked to keep hisself to hisself.”
The community of Shoal Cove stretched out below them. On that lovely summer night it looked idyllic and peaceful, tucked in close to the water, tight to the land, protected by the headland.
“I’m glad that we met, Mr. Coady. I’m glad he had a friend like you,” Nora said. The cigarette still smouldered on the ground, glowed like a tiny beacon in the black gravel. “He was my grandfather but I never knew him, knew nothing about him until I came here.” She looked across at him.
“I knows, missus. I knows what ye mean.”
Nora wondered if he did know, if he could